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An Indian Food Tour of Queens with Madhur Jaffrey

This is dahi aloo puri, a type of cold snack made of chickpeas, crispy puri shells, yogurt, tamarind and chiles.

Last week I was in New York for the IACP conference, a huge annual gathering of culinary folks from all over the U.S. -- chefs, food writers, bloggers, entrepreneurs. As part of one of the official pre-conference activities I'd signed up to take an Indian food tour of Queens with Madhur Jaffrey. I was particularly jazzed about this. Madhur Jaffrey is one of the world's foremost authorities on Indian food. Her first book, an Invitation to Indian Cooking, was published in 1973 and is still widely considered a classic. She has written more than 15 books on Indian cuisine and hosted Indian cooking programs on the BBC. She's also a film and television actress. (For further study: Madhur Jaffrey's lengthy IMDB entry.) Meeting Madhur, and getting ready for Indian food On the morning of the tour, Ms. Jaffrey -- an elegant, regal woman -- showed up at the conference hotel in a chic black jacket with a fur-lined collar, oversize sunglasses and sparkly stud earrings. She passed out handouts that listed what we'd try: Gujarati sweets, homemade chapatis, parathas, chana masalas, paan, goat curry, plus chaat and curries from Kerala. We'd also visit an Indian grocery store. Twelve of us piled into a small white bus near Times Square and set off for Jackson Heights. About 20 minutes later we pulled up to Rajbhog Sweets, a bright, spotless cafe owned by a family from Gujarat. Rahjbog Sweets: chapatis, sugar, hand-rolled noodles and more The sweets were already on the tables: sticky, syrup-soaked jalebis, creamy milk-fudge squares of barfi. We sipped hot chai and nibbled on the sweets -- "Not too much, there are several meals to come," Madhur warned -- and we tried a light, spicy, canary-yellow piece of dhokla, a garbanzo-flour cake topped with chili oil, mustard seeds and cilantro. I kept asking Madhur questions. "So people eat this in the morning?" She said yes. "They eat them both at the same time?" She said the sweet and savory combo was very desirable.

Before we got off the bus, Madhur had said that Rajbhog's chapatis were the best she's tried in the U.S. Owners Nirav and Neha Shah invited us into the kitchen, where we watched the cook, Sabita, roll out the dough with a thin rolling pin. She heated the chapatis on a grill and then placed them on a gas flame, where they ballooned into puffy ovals.

A perfectly inflated chapati.

Madhur also gave us a short history lesson on where the word "chapati" comes from -- chapat means to slap, so chapati is a bread made by slapping or hand-patting the dough into a thin sheet. Parathas, paan and ogling the Indian produce aisles The next stop was just a half-block away: cauliflower and potato parathas from Raj Sweets, and black garbanzo bean curry. "The garbanzo bean was originally black," Madhur told us. (As an aside, this is about where I pinched myself for the fifth time that day. How did I get lucky enough to take this tour?)

Our piece of paan had rose jam, along with several other spices and seeds.

Our last three stops were just as great as the rest: a stroll through Patel Brothers Indian supermarket, where I ogled the fresh curry leaves, and a sumptuous goat curry from a place called Kabab King. We visited Kerala Kitchen -- the only Keralan food restaurant in New York that Madhur knows of -- where we tried creamy and smoky fish curries, several types of dosas and coconut mung-bean rice. But there was still one last stop to come: chaat. Chaat: the snack I've always wanted I thought chaat, an umbrella term for Indian snack food, meant fried crunchy potato chip-like things, or some sort of breaded, fried nugget. Totally not true. Bhel puri, from Usha Foods in Floral Park, was just as baroque as any of the street snacks I'd see in Mexico -- cold garbanzo beans lay mixed with potatoes, tamarind and puffed rice, topped with crispy-fried garbanzo noodles and lots of cilantro. It was like an Indian-Mexican potato salad. Why was the whole world not eating this?

Bhel puri at Usha Foods in Floral Park, New York.

Madhur saw my look of glee (I was shoveling in the stuff as if I had grown an extra stomach) and she smiled. "I love chaat!" I said. "Good," she said. "Indians love chaat. They can't live without their chaat." I'm so grateful to have been on this tour. An Invitation to Indian Cooking is in my Amazon queue. Can't wait to get it and start cooking.

Did you not mention the names of the places because you forgot them? If you can remember would love to hear because after the first one – Rajbhog Sweets – you didn’t mention the places. Maybe too many sweets?

Hi Phyllis: No, I didn’t mention them because I wasn’t sure whether Ms. Jaffrey would approve. (As a tour operator I don’t necessarily want all my hard-earned research on the Internet, to be honest.) I do think she wanted us to promote these businesses, however. I just added the names and links to their websites/addresses.

Yes! The most diverse county in the world:Queens. Thanks for the tour. I would love to know about Indo/Pak food availability in DF…my biggest fear of culinary loss when I become leave Brooklyn to become Chilango.

Hi Steve: Sadly, we don’t have many Indian restaurants here. I think there are three: one in Polanco, one in Condesa and one in Santa Fe. (I hear the latter one is the best, but it’s all the way in Santa Fe.) They’re fine to satisfy a craving, but I’ve found the best stuff are dishes I make at home. So bone up on the Indian food and spices before you leave!

Lesley I am soooo glad you were able to do this tour! How completely wonderful! Oh you are making me hungry. We were able to stop in GDL for Indian food today on our way home from Morelia to MZT. While it sure made our day, it was nothing like this! Wow!

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Who is Mija?

Mija is Lesley Téllez, a food writer and culinary guide in New York City. I lived in Mexico City for four years, which launched my deep love for Mexican food and culture. I currently run the tourism company Eat Mexico and just wrote a cookbook about Mexico City's street, market and fonda food.